The senior commander of the Central Command of the United States, during a session of the Armed Services Committee of the U.S. Senate, stated the key to deterrence is “Tehran has to understand there are consequences” but “deterrence is temporary.”
“Iran has thrown the Middle East into “a convergence of crises” with its military support of Hamas in Gaza and the Houthis in Yemen,” Army Gen. Michael Kurilla told the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday adding the middle east is in the most volatile situation in 50 years.
Kurilla said: “In the Middle East, to help finance these militia operations, Iran is selling 90 percent of its oil to China.”
He, with reference to the danger of Tehran becoming a nuclear power, emphasized that Tehran remains on “the threshold” of becoming a nuclear power.
Kurilla added that the key to deterrence is “Tehran has to understand there are consequences” but “deterrence is temporary.” He said there have been more than 170 attacks on U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq since Oct. 7, the day Hamas in the Gaza Strip launched a series of attacks on Israel. There have been eight U.S. military strikes in response.
Kurilla said that the United States economy relies on safe transits of commercial shipping through the Red Sea. He added 30 percent of all maritime trade passes through its waterways.
Kurilla continued that 24 nations’ navies are participating in Operation Prosperity Guardian trying to protect container and tanker ships in the Red Sea. But the continuing strikes have caused an increasing number of shippers to take the far longer route around the Cape of Good Hope at Africa’s southern tip for safety.
Continuing, he pointed out the ongoing attacks by the Houthi rebels, stating, “You have to have a layered defense” on land and sea to protect against drone attacks. Swarms of cheap attributable drones flying low and slow pose a particularly acute danger. Kurilla urged Congress to pass a supplemental budget, which would provide him with more than $530 million for more high-powered microwave systems and relatively cheap Army Coyote interceptors to take done that kind of attack.
Houthi semi-military forces in Yemen, who receive support from the Iranian regime, have repeatedly attacked international commercial ships in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea with missiles and drones since late October 2023.
Many of these group’s attacks have been neutralized by American or coalition forces, and a significant number of their bases within Yemen have become targets of independent or joint attacks by the US military and other allied countries.
Nevertheless, Houthi leaders have declared that they will refrain from attacking ships until the end of the conflict in Gaza.
The Biden administration, which had removed the Houthis from the list of terrorist organizations shortly after taking office in January 2021, re-designated this group as “specially designated global terrorists” on February 16, 2024.
On January 10, the Telegraph reported, citing its sources inside Iran, that Houthi forces in Yemen have received training at the “Khamenei Maritime Science and Technology University” in Zibakenar, Rasht (northern Iran), and that Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Iranian regime, oversees their activities.
